Happy Wednesday! I’m still riding the high from attending my first Bouchercon last weekend. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this amazing conference, here’s the summary from their site: Bouchercon is the annual world mystery convention where every year readers, writers, publishers, editors, agents, booksellers and other lovers of crime fiction gather for a 4-day weekend of education, entertainment, and fun!

This year’s conference, aptly named Denim, Diamonds, & Death, was in Dallas which made it a no brainer for this Dallasite to attend. Add in the opportunity to rub elbows with a couple of thousand mystery writer and fans and this conference was a dream come true.

Panel topics ranged from varieties of poison to unreliable narrators. I moderated a rockstar lineup for the Not a Diversity Panel that featured a gathering of diverse authors – Steph Cha, S.A. Cosby, Cheryl Head, and Michael – to talk about all aspects of writing. If you haven’t checked out the works of these award-winnings authors, get on it!

Next up for me was the Love and Murder panel, moderated by LA Chandlar, which was all about writing romantic suspense. Here I am with Laurie R. King, LA, Julie Ann Lindsey, and special guest of the conference, Sandra Brown, who was, I’m happy to report, one of the nicest humans I’ve ever met:

I enjoyed connecting with old friends (here’s me and J.M. Redmann):

And new ones, like Michael Nava:

And this character, who was wandering the halls on the first night:

If you read and/or write mysteries, this conference is the place for you. Like GCLS, the conference is in a different location each year. You can check out all the relevant info on their website.